


the only way to understand

by clandestinerabbit



Category: Girl Meets World
Genre: And Friendship, F/M, Post-Canon, and art, it's basically just flirting, the metropolitan museum of art
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-30 05:02:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17822405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clandestinerabbit/pseuds/clandestinerabbit
Summary: Josh, having some trouble in art appreciation, asks Maya for help. Maya, believing the only way to understand art is to look at it, takes him to the Met.





	the only way to understand

**Author's Note:**

> All the paintings described below are real, and really hang at the Met in New York City. You can see them by clicking the links.

Ukrainian pastry was a pretty good excuse, Josh thought. While there were coffee shops closer to his new matchbox-sized apartment and libraries with better wi-fi, the authentic Ukrainian pastry still handmade and sold at Topanga’s place had no equal in his experience, and it wasn’t out of the question that he would tramp all the way there for a  _ shulick  _ or two. And since he  _ had  _ tramped all the way there, it made sense that he would stay and have a drink along with them. And if he was going to stay and have a drink, he might as well bring his book and computer along and do a little work.

“Uh-huh,” his sister-in-law says, both eyebrows raised. “You know,  _ I  _ could give you Maya’s number, if you want it. I promise not to overreact.”

“It’s not just the getting it,” he says, plunging his straw up and down in his cup, “it’s the what-you-do-with-it. I send her a text, okay. That’s opening a line of communication that never closes. Even if I’m just asking a favor, then there’s a back-and-forth about arranging the details, then anytime the other person wants the conversation is just there, waiting, like a perennial blinking cursor in a doc. It’s a lot of pressure. Worse than that, it’s a precedent. It’s a precedent I’m not comfortable with, at this time.”

Topanga rolls her eyes to the ceiling—to the heavens, probably—and addresses her next comment the same direction. “Lord help us, it’s finally happened. He’s lasted so long, I thought we had a chance, but it comes for them all.”

“What comes,” he asks, pretty sure he doesn’t want to know the answer.

“That moment when the Matthews stop thinking in straightforward lines like normal people and start spiraling downward into the land of Unnecessary Complications. What should be easy becomes difficult; what should be obvious becomes obtuse. I love ya, but it drives me up the wall.”

“We do not,” he protests, but she skewers him with her patented Topanga  _ oh really  _ and he gives up. “Fine, we do, but how am I doing that here?”

“How are you doing that here?” Topanga laughs lightly, flips her hair over her shoulders, and leans forward over the counter on her elbows. Oh, he’s  _ so  _ going to get it. “Well, let’s see, you have a problem for which you have already identified a possible solution—so far so good. You have multiple ways to implement this solution—also good. But because something goes off-road in your little Matthews brain you decide to take the most roundabout path to this solution in order to avoid perceived—nay,  _ imagined _ —complications, which could result in no solution whatsoever, leaving you with a perfectly avoidable problem. Have I summed that up well enough?”

When she puts it like that, it seems ridiculous. How many girls’ phone numbers does he have in his contacts, anyway, from parties or group projects or buddies’ exes or whatever? As long as no one who might read too much into the situation knows about it—his brother, his niece, her dad—he really doesn’t need to make it harder than it has to be. As though Topanga can read his mind, she nods encouragement. “You know I’m right, don’t you.”

He leans back in his seat, scratching the back of his neck and squirming. “I didn’t say anything.”

“Didn’t have to,” she says, smug. “I recognize the signs.”

“You’re telling me this works on my brother?”

“Eventually. I’ve been doing this a long time, Josh. I’ve had time to perfect it.”

“Fine,” he sighs, knowing this is another one of those times he needs to get on with it or admit he’s more of a disaster than he wants to admit. “You’re right.”

“I’m glad you came to this conclusion so quickly,” says Topanga, and looks over his shoulder toward the door. “Hey, Maya. Josh has a question to ask you.”

He snaps to attention and hisses a wild “what the heck” at his sister-in-law, who winks none too subtly before turning to the girl plopping herself on the stool next to him. “What can I do for you today, Maya?”

Maya’s backpack thumps to the ground as she sprawls across the counter, her hair going everywhere. “Coffee please, as black as Morotia’s soul. Trig is killing me and caffeine is the only thing that can restart my heart.” From within the cloud, one bright blue eye bats up at him. “Well, maybe not the only thing. Hel _ looo  _ there, Boing.”

“Maya,” he says, manfully ignoring his biological response to a pretty girl flirting with him. This is just part of their game; he should be used to it by now. “Where’s my niece and the rest of the motley crew?”

“Still at school, or tutoring, or various activities. The last semester of senior year kicks your butt.”

“You’re telling me this?”

If possible, she sinks even further into the counter. “You mean it doesn’t let up in college?”

“ ’fraid not.”

Maya groans, reaching blindly for the coffee Topanga set by her hand and lifting her head only high enough to drink it. “And here I thought it was all downhill from here. When does life get easier? It’s gotta sometime, right?”

“With three more years of experience, I can say for sure not yet.”

“With a lot more than three years,” Topanga says from down the counter, “I can say for sure it doesn’t get easier, but it feels easier when you learn to enjoy it.”

“Goody,” Maya sighs. “Well, there’s always coffee to keep you awake and friends to keep you sane.”

“I’ll drink to that,” he says, tapping the base of his iced mocha against her mug. They took a long sip in unison. As she swallowed, a slow, contented smile spread across her face.

“Okay, I’m alive again. What do you need to ask me?”

He raises one eyebrow, playing dumb. She isn’t convinced.

“Mrs. Matthews said you had something to ask me. She doesn’t play like that, so you must actually have something, so what is it?”

“Promise not to laugh.”

“If you have to ask I definitely cannot promise that.”

Which is fair, so he just makes a face and reaches into his backpack to retrieve his book. “So, it’s important that you know that registrars are stupid and pointless and very bad at doing their actual job, okay?”

“I don’t know what their job is.” 

“All they’re supposed to do is make sure students get all the classes they need to graduate on time. That’s it, that’s all they have to do. And yet, more students than not get screwed over and suddenly find out in their last semester that they’re missing a fine arts credit they thought they had covered freshman year.”

Maya opens her eyes wide, all faux-concern and barely-covered amusement. “Aw, it’s sweet of you to get so worked up about this.”

“That’s the kind of guy I am.” The book thuds heavily as he drops the book on the counter between them, shoving it her direction so she can see the title:  _ Art Through the Centuries. _

“You’re taking an art appreciation class?” Eyes alight, she opens the book to a place in the middle and starts flipping pages, her fingers tracing the images of—paintings, probably. He isn’t looking that closely at the pictures. 

“It was this or music appreciation, and I couldn’t get into that. Theatre appreciation is too rich for my blood.”

“Great choice. The best choice. I can’t wait to take art classes. Do you like it?”

“Well, therein lies the favor.”

“Oh, it’s a favor now? I’m intrigued.”

“Yeah.” It was kind of embarrassing, to be honest; heretofore their relationship had always been Him, imparter of wisdom, Her, receiver of the same, but he’s wise enough to admit he needs help no matter how ridiculous it makes him feel. “I just...don’t get it? Theoretically I can understand, and some of the movements make sense because of their purpose in their context. But we’re doing portraits now, and I don’t see the point.”

“You don’t see the point?” She laughs, incredulous. “Haven’t you ever taken a picture of a person just because you wanted to remember them?”

“Yeah, of course, but in four hundred years I won’t expect anyone else to care about them. Whole periods of portraits don’t even have individual techniques to make them important that way.”

Maya clutches her heart and groans loudly enough to make two or three people turn and look at her. “You’re killing me, Josh. You brought me back to life only to kill me again. How can you say that?” 

“So tell me why I’m wrong. I get that I am, but I don’t know why. I don’t know anyone better than you to explain it.”

“No one in the whole of NYU?”

“No one.”

For a second, her face gets soft—it’s not as rare an expression as it used to be, but he still loves being the one to surprise it from her. Then she brushes her hair over her shoulders and straightens, nodding firmly. “Okay. Meet me on Saturday at the 82nd Street entrance of the Met.”

“You can’t just tell me now?”

“This is a serious situation, Josh. I can’t make you understand with just pictures in books. We have to see the real thing.”

 

*****

 

She’s waiting at the top of the steps, leaning against one of the enormous stone pillars with sunglasses perched on her head and a sketchbook tucked under her arm. “Just in case,” she says when she notices him looking at it, “it’s the best way to learn.”

“I’ve never seen you with one before.”

“I don’t usually carry it around people I know. They’re too noisy.” Not giving him time to process this, she pushes off the pillar and gestures toward the entrance. “Shall we?”

The cool stone nobility of the Great Hall seems no more than tolerant of his presence, but Maya ignores it with equal indifference and heads to the ticket desk in the right corner. “You can pay what you like,” she explains, “but you have to pay something or they’ll give you the evil eye. It’s a perk of living here.”

“How much is the student fee?”

“Twelve bucks, I think? I generally give them whatever I have in my pocket.”

Being a college student, Josh doesn’t have anything except lint and a dime in his pocket, but he has enough in his bank account to cover his and Maya’s tickets. “You wouldn’t be here if not for me, so I’ll get it.”

“Joke’s on you,” she says, “I come here every Saturday I can, anyway. But thanks.” Her eyes light up. “If you paid for both of us, does this count as a date?”

“Nope. You asked me to come, so if it was a date you would pay. Plus, I’m still too old for you.”

“But less than you were before.” 

From the Great Hall, they make their way up the wide staircase to the second floor, pausing only to peek over the balcony into the courtyard below. “It’s going to get crowded from here,” she warns, which he could guess by all the people streaming in, “sure you don’t want to hold my hand so you won’t get lost? I know it’s not the right part of the year, but these might be extenuating circumstances.”

He doesn’t quite manage to keep a grin from materializing, but his eye-roll tempers it, he hopes. “I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to find you.”

“Okay then, keep up!”

She runs up the last few stairs and hangs a left into a room full of paintings he recognizes as Italian religious art, then continues through a blur of rooms filled variously with religious art, landscapes, and one of (mostly) nudes before coming to a stop in a room hung with small paintings in dark, almost muddy shades. People crowd several paintings in jostling semi-circles, peering at plaques and pressing the audio guides to their ears. In the corner, a tour guide speaking in German gestures to a painting of  [ a girl in a blue skirt and a large white cape-thing ](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437881) . “It’s the Vermeers,” Maya says, darting between the clumps of people, “there are only about thirty of his paintings that we know about, and the Met has five of them.”

“I know about Vermeer,” he says. “They think some of his paintings aren’t really his, right?”

“And we’ll never know. Personally, I think if the fakes have passed all this time they’re great works of art in themselves, but not everyone agrees with me. Anyway, we aren’t here to see them; we’re here to see these.”

They have come to a halt between two medium-sized paintings, one of  [ a man with long hair and a small mustache ](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437399) , and one of  [ a woman holding a flower ](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437402) . “Okay,” she says, folding her arms in front of her, “what do you see?”

He stares at them a second, trying to come up with something that isn’t totally, embarassingly basic. “Their clothes look expensive,” he says finally. “And they were getting their portraits done, so they probably were pretty rich. She has another painting in a fancy frame behind her head, so...maybe she was an art collector? I don’t know what he has in his hand, but it could be another clue.”

“Not bad.” She nods her head, thoughtful. “I mean, the clothes don’t have anything to do with it because they were just costumes, and the painting is really more about the frame, but not bad.”

“Was she a frame collector?”

Maya laughs. “No, Boing. That’s not an occupation held by well-to-do women in the 1600s. Or by anyone ever.” She pauses, lifting her eyebrows as if to say  _ go on. _ “Anything else?”

“He looks dignified. She looks...tired. Maybe a little sad.”

“Good. Really good.”

He expects her to elaborate, but instead she just stands there, head tilted to one side, frowning a little as she stares at the man and the woman. Waiting a minute, then two, he finally clears his throat. 

“Okay, so why are these paintings important? Is it just because they’re by”—a quick glance at the identifying placards provides the necessary information—“Rembrandt?”

“Not just because,” she says. “Partly because. Rembrandt did a lot of portraits.”

“Of himself,” he says, because he remembers that from his textbook.

“And his wife, and his son. And other people.”

“So why are we looking at these?”

“You’ll see.” Turning so quickly she makes him lose his balance, she pushes her way back the direction they came from and all but leaves him in the dust. He has to skip around the other guests to follow, throwing the security guard an apology as he passes into the next room, and almost runs into Maya when she stops suddenly at the edge of a thick crowd around an enormous double portrait. Her hair smells like apples as she twists around to make sure he’s there. “All right there?”

His hands hover above her shoulders, seeking better balance. “Just fine,” he says, shoving them in his pockets instead.

Eyebrows flickering amusedly, she lets him off and gestures at the painting. “Okay, go.”

He takes a step backward, just enough to take in  [ the whole thing ](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436106) at once, and assumes a critical eye. Luckily, this painting makes it easy to apply the basic tools Art Appreciation provides. “Okay,” he says, “the artist is working with diagonals. The guy’s leg and the drape in the tablecloth, plus the quill and the way he’s looking. They all point you back to the lady, especially because she’s in the center of the painting and looking right at you. And everything else in the room is dark in color, but she’s light, which is contrast.”

“So what does that tell you about the people in it?”

“That she’s the most important.” He answers quickly, but as soon as the words leave his mouth he realizes how accurate they are. “Actually, yeah. The guy is clearly in the middle of something, but all the equipment is at the edge of the painting, and the stuff on the table is actually blocked off by his left arm. The papers he’s writing are part of the diagonal lines with the quill and her arm, but you don’t get stuck there because you keep going back to her.” Putting his hand on the back of his neck, he looks sideways at Maya. “Is that right?”

“Yup.”

“What, just like that?”

“Just like that,” she says. “These people are actually important people—we know their names and stuff. He was the guy who wrote the first important book about chemistry, and she was a queen.”

“What queen?”

“Oh my gosh.” Maya rolls her eyes. “Not that kind of queen. She translated a lot of scientific works and did a bunch of drawings of his experiments for the book, and she helped in the lab and after he was guillotined made sure his last books were published.”

“Like Eliza Hamilton.”

“Exactly. So even though this is called  _ Antoine Laurent Lavoisier and his wife _ , you can tell that the artist and Lavoisier himself really gave Marie the central position.”

“Not just because she’s prettier?” he jokes, and she rolls her eyes again.

“Good work. Let’s keep going.”

Retreating again, this time through several busy rooms, they stop in a small, quiet space peopled only by themselves and the security guard. A scan of the walls makes it obvious which painting she means to observe, but he doesn’t understand why until they get closer.

“Wow,” he says aloud without meaning to. 

Maya drops onto the low bench behind him, waving an airy hand. “You may begin.”

He stares at  [ the man in the painting ](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437869?searchField=All&;sortBy=relevance&;ft=juan+de+pareja&;offset=0&;rpp=20&;pos=1) , who stares back with a dignified wariness that makes him only want to not disappoint. Something about the man demands careful attention, so Josh takes his time observing the sketchy white lace collar, the various textures of cloth and velvet, the highlights on the man’s face. Finally, he turns to Maya and shrugs, both hands palm up. “I don’t know how to talk about this as a painting. It doesn’t look like a painting. It looks like a man.”

A quiet smile spreads across her face. “When this painting was first displayed, someone said ‘everything else is a painting; this is the Truth.’”

“For real?”

That comment receives a (probably deserved) scoff. “You think I memorized it word perfect? But something like that.” Leaning forward, she props her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands. “There’s a story that people seeing the man next to this painting didn’t know who they were supposed to talk to.”

“Is it a self-portrait?”

“No,” she says, “he’s a slave.”

“A slave!” He looks again, trying to see if there’s anything—other than the man’s skin color—to suggest that. He doesn’t find anything. “But what about the collar? That’s fancy. How did he get his painting done?”

“What do you think?”

Josh has a pretty good brain, he thinks, so it doesn’t take long to guess. “The artist was his owner? Cheap model, I guess. The collar could just be for show. But either the artist wasn’t telling the whole truth, or they weren’t like we think of masters and slaves. This man doesn’t hate you. And he doesn’t look...beaten. He looks like he’s content in himself.”

“The artist,” she says, a far-off look in her eyes, “made a point to paint the truth, and he was always very kind to his subjects. He painted a bunch of pictures of little people, and he could have made fun of them, but they always look like...people. Someday I’m going to see more of his work in person.”

“Where are they?”

“Mostly in Spain. That’s where he was from—Velasquez, I mean.”

“And who’s this?” he asks, gesturing to the painting.

“Juan de Pareja. He was freed later and became a painter himself.”

He makes a noise so she knows he heard her, but keeps looking at the painting. “Hey, Juan,” he says. “Nice to meet you.”

From there, they make their way out of the European area into a long room of drawings, a hallway that becomes a long room of photographs, and then—wait—back into Europe? 

“Of course,” Maya says, “do you think the Met—the  _ Met _ —only has one wing of European paintings? Nope. These are the newer ones.”

“So who are we seeing here?”

“Just a couple nobodies.”

But the glass case in the middle of the room contains  [ a painting ](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436532) of someone even Josh recognizes. “Um, Vincent Van Gogh isn’t a nobody.”

“Well, I wasn’t sure you’d recognize him.”

“I’ve seen  _ Doctor Who. _ Plus, Cory and Topanga have a thing about  _ Starry Night _ —I don’t know, it’s the reason they’re married or something.”

“Really?” Maya asks, delighted, “I thought that was monkeys and the zoo.”

“Monkey bars, actually. The zoo was something else—something to do with Shawn, maybe? It blurs together. I’m not even sure Cory can keep it straight, honestly.”

“Dad says he and Mr. Matthews have known each other longer than Mr. Matthews and Riley’s uncle. Not you. Obviously, not you, because you’re not that much older than me.”

“But still too old.”

“For now,” she agrees, voice lilting. “So, Van Gogh, definitely not a nobody. What do you know about Van Gogh?”

Josh pushes out his bottom lip and looks for answers on the ceiling. “Um, he struggled with depression, he used thick lines of color, he didn’t sell any paintings—”

“Bing bing bing! And, now, for the special bonus, Josh Matthews must answer this question: if he never sold a painting, how popular would he be?” Maya holds an invisible microphone to her chin, then points it at him.

“I’m going to say not.”

The microphone returns to her. “And what does he paint, then?”

Back to him. “His room,” he says, trying to remember. “Landscapes. Self-portraits.”

“And…”

“People he knows?”

“Yup.” She drops the microphone and grabs his hand instead, pulling him around to the other side of the glass case. On Van Gogh’s back is  [ another, very different painting ](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/438722) : where Van Gogh has red and blue undertones, the strokes radiating out from his eyes, this one is brown like mud and as heavy as a rock. The identification card says  _ The Potato Peeler _ , and the whole thing kind of looks like a potato after it’s been washed but before it’s been peeled. “Is this like Lavoisier’s wife, that she’s someone we know about, or is she really just a potato peeler?”

“Just a potato peeler, as far as we know. Van Gogh painted a big painting of a family eating potatoes and this woman is one of them—but they don’t have names or anything. They’re farmers. They eat potatoes.”

“She looks like a farmer.”

“You think?”

He cants his head, considering. “Yeah, like she works in the dirt. Not that she looks dirty, but like she’s used to it. And look at her hands—it’s kind of hard to tell where her fingers stop and the potato begins. It’s almost like they’re the same thing.” Stepping back so someone behind them can get a better look, he turns to her and puts his hands in his pockets. “Is this where we talk about how Van Gogh’s muted colors and weighty lines give her dignity, or…”

“Do you think they do?”

He casts a considering glance over his shoulder. “Something does. I don’t know what it is.” A self-deprecating smile seems in order here—don’t want to get too cocky. “Which is why I am totally failing at this unit.”

“Oh, I don’t think you’re totally failing. I mean, I wouldn’t suggest you become an art historian or anything, but you’re not too shabby. Come on.”

She retraces their steps until they come into a long, thin room dotted with sculptures he vaguely remembers seeing on their way to Van Gogh, then turns to the right and leads them away from where they’ve been. The paintings give way to cases holding small marbles and bronzes and pedestals holding larger ones, none of which seem to interest Maya but keep demanding his attention as he goes by. “Hold on,” he says, reaching out to catch her sleeve between two fingers, “can we just stop and look at these a minute?”

She comes like the snap of a rubber band. “Are you into sculpture?”

“Not as a general rule, but these are pretty amazing.” They’ve stopped behind a large  [ statue of a ma ](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/191803?searchField=All&;sortBy=relevance&;od=on&;ft=Auguste+Rodin&;offset=0&;rpp=20&;pos=4) n so bent and twisted Josh wouldn’t be surprised to see it was meant to be Quasimodo. Instead, the identification reads  _ Adam _ . 

“Oh, right,” Maya nods. “Look at his hand—it looks the Sistine Chapel.”

Sure enough, the statue’s dangling arm ends in a pointed finger he recognises from his textbook, not to mention tacky t-shirts and mousepads. “So this is a comment on that painting by Michelangelo. In that, Adam is being given the spark of life, but in this he looks like he wants to die. And yet he can’t forget that God-given spark.”

She blinks quickly, both eyebrows going up. “Wow, Boing, that’s deep. Are you sure you’re having problems with this?”

“That one’s easy.” He shrugs. “I already know the story it’s telling. Not a lot to interpret there.”

Her eyes narrow, not like she doesn’t believe him but like he’s said something she has to think about. “So, you’re trying to...figure it out. Like if you find the right clues you’ll understand the one meaning that the piece of art has. You’re having trouble with portraits because you don’t understand what kind of mystery they’re hiding.”

Looking up at Adam, he shoves his hands in his pockets and shifts his weight from foot to foot. “Art is subjective, isn’t it? It means different things to different people. It’s not like it has one answer. Just, sometimes, wrong ones.”

“That’s true. But that doesn’t mean people don’t look for the right one.” Her fingers curl around  _ right _ . “But unless an artist sits down and says ‘this is exactly what I mean and there are no other valid interpretations’ no one can be sure they got it. And maybe not even then. Who can say.”

“Isn’t that what I said?”

She smiles, looking somewhere over his shoulder. “Talk is cheap, Josh. But time is money. Let’s keep going.”

They meander past Greco-Roman sculpture, wind their way around the tables of the cafe that overlooks the Great Hall, and wander through quite a few rooms of Asian art. “We’re not even touching it this trip,” Maya says, “but you’ll probably talk about it sometime in your class, and you could come back and look if you wanted.”

“I was going to say, I didn’t think there were a lot of portraits in Asian art.”

“Just the easiest way to get around. They’re doing some construction in the European paintings—”

“You mean there’s  _ more _ ?”

“How many times do I have to tell you this is the Met?” she asks, almost patiently.

Past the elevator at the end of the Asian galleries, they enter into a room that looks like, well, a room: panelled walls, fireplace, furniture, paintings hung only like paintings would be in a home. “What’s this?” he asks, feeling suddenly scruffy in his jeans and sneakers, peering over the low-slung velvet ropes.

“It’s a room from somebody’s house somewhere, way back in the day. I don’t know if the furniture is from the room, or just what might have been there, or what exactly. But it means we’re in the American wing.”

Locating the informational card, he’s pleased to learn the room is from the home of Philly’s first American governor. “Just what might have been there, it looks like. This is pretty cool. I don’t think I’ve seen something like this in a museum that’s not actually in a house already. It makes you think about all the kinds of art, doesn’t it? Architecture, and furniture, and rugs—even wallpaper, I guess.”

She goes up close to the mural on the far wall and peers at it, her hands behind her back. “It makes me think about how things don’t have to stay ugly. So, we need walls, but why do we paint them or put wallpaper on them? Just because we can, because it looks beautiful and makes us happy. Some people say that art is necessary, but I think it’s extra, and that’s why it’s so amazing. It’s like...hoping, almost. Like we keep believing that things can be good.” A smile darts his direction over her shoulder. “Even Riley’s terrible purple cats. In Rileytown, cats are purple.”

“She still does those?”

“Ohhh, she’ll never stop.”

The American galleries are, apparently, twistier than European painting, and they have to take diagonal courses through a few more transplanted rooms of decoration and furniture before going up a set of stairs with a worn wooden bannister and coming out about a century later. “Ashcan artists,” Maya says, “the two of you have a lot in common.”

“Care to clarify that statement?”

“Just, they grew up in Philadelphia, moved here, realized that New York is the best city in the world with the best girls in the world, and never went back.”

“I don’t know where I’m going after my internship is done, Maya. It could be back.”

“It  _ could _ be,” she says, mouth in a tight and mischievous secret, “but I have my doubts.”

“Just don’t—” He stops. Of all the people in the world, Maya is the one who least needs to be told not to get her hopes up. And since he honestly has no clue, telling her to manage—expectations? Are they even expectations? Is this just another part of the game? Or is this art business getting to his head and he’s looking way too hard into everything? He shakes his head to clear it and looks around the room. “Never mind. Are we looking at something in here, or…”

She shakes her head in her turn. “Next room. We’re going up a level.”

The level, he quickly learns, is only metaphorical; they stay at the same altitude, but the ceiling seems to soar above them as the paintings in this gallery stretch up like trees. They aren’t quite as big as the painting of the scientist and his wife, but their proportions make them look taller. He wriggles through the crowd—larger in this room—to stand in the center and turns slowly enough to take it all in.

“Which of these?” he asks— [ the pale woman in the black evening dress ](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/12127?searchField=All&;sortBy=relevance&;od=on&;ft=john+singer+sargent&;offset=0&;rpp=20&;pos=1) ,  [ a man holding a cape and a fan ](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/13211?searchField=Gallery&;sortBy=relevance&;od=on&;ft=%22771%22&;offset=0&;rpp=20&;pos=2) , several ladies in evening gowns—every single painting in this room is a full-length portrait, and though they look different from each other they don’t look different enough to make it obvious which one she thinks worth paying attention to.

“Is there one you like more?”

“What, you’re saying I get to choose?”

“I’m feeling generous.”

Scanning again more slowly, he considers the glamor girls and dandies that line the walls, pausing on  [ the one man who isn’t looking at the painter ](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/10827?searchField=Gallery&;sortBy=relevance&;od=on&;ft=%22771%22&;offset=0&;rpp=20&;pos=1) and stopping for a long minute on  [ the older couple ](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/10128?searchField=Gallery&;sortBy=relevance&;od=on&;ft=%22771%22&;offset=0&;rpp=20&;pos=6) , but his eyes keep going back to the  [ couple who look like they should be riding bikes with huge front wheels ](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/12140?searchField=All&;sortBy=relevance&;od=on&;ft=john+singer+sargent&;offset=0&;rpp=20&;pos=2) . “This one,” he decides, going to stand in front of it.

“Okay,” she says, joining him, “why this one? Are you going to astonish me with insight about the lighting or their matching bow ties?”

He shrugs. “I like this girl.”

He’s surprised her again, and maybe pleased her too, because the apples of her cheeks appear even though her mouth stays steadily small. “Getting your head turned by a pretty face there, Boing? And with her husband staring at you, too?”

“It’s not—”

“I  _ know _ . Why do you like this girl more than the other ones?”

“Well,” he says, “leaving aside the fact that it’s generally unfair to judge anyone by their appearance and problematic especially for me, a white cis male, to presume to speak to the female experience—”

“Oh my  _ gosh. _ ”

“—I think it’s cool that she had her portrait done in her ordinary clothes. She looks like maybe she just came in from a brisk walk and the painter happened to be there to dash off her picture. She knows who she is and is comfortable with it; she doesn’t feel a need to impress anyone. I’m not sure if her husband feels awkward or just doesn’t want to have his portrait painted, but she’ll probably talk him around into a good mood. She seems like that kind of person.” He looks behind him to find the coolly elusive lady in the black dress. “Not like that woman. She’d be a supervillain with ice powers.”

“What about that guy?” she asks, pointing to the one holding the cape.

“A good boyfriend,” he says without having to think about it, “I don’t think he really wanted to go to the opera. He’d probably rather stay home with a glass of port.”

“Port?”

“Hey, I know history too.”

“What about the grandparents?”

“They probably throw a lot of balls for charity and support the temperance movement, even though they have an incredible wine cellar. It’s inherited.”

Her smile cracks wide open. “Do they give their grandchildren good presents, or do they insist on pulling yourself up by your bootstraps?”

“Grandfather talks a good game, but you find out after you’ve been in your job for a year that he and the boss went to Yale together. Grandmother gives you gross candies out of a dish and clothes you’d never wear, but she means well.”

“If only my grandparents were actually like that, instead of dead.” 

“They’re going to be very disappointed with you in the Twenties,” he says, pulling on a serious voice, “but since they’re old-fashioned old souls they don’t play the stock market, and you’ll thank them for it during the Depression.”

“Thanks, grandparents!” She pretends to blow them a kiss, then knocks her shoulder into his arm. “Well, I think we’ve learned everything we’re going to learn here. One more painting, and we’re done.”

“Wait, seriously?”

“Yes, seriously.” She makes a face at him. “Are you doubting my methods?”

“Just a little!” he says, feeling his eyebrows pulling together the way all his brothers’ do when they’re confused and alarmed. Eric pretty much lives with this expression. “We haven’t talked about, I don’t know, brushstrokes or light source or paint choice or anything about technique. Shouldn’t we do that?”

“We can if you  _ want _ , but I don’t know that we  _ should _ . Do you think the technique is what makes the painting of Queen Ice different from Mrs. Brisk Walk?”

“Well, yeah. Look.” He points to the painting in front of them. “This is loose and warm; she’s looking right at you and her body is turned toward you and it’s all really casual. They’re wearing linen or something, you don’t do that if you’re trying to be aloof.” Stalking over to the other portrait, he waves his arm wildly. The other people in the gallery avoid looking their direction, which Maya appears to find excessively amusing. “This is way more formal—the lines are solid, this wood table is really hard, she’s looking away and protecting herself with her posture, everything is dark and serious. That’s all technique.”

With one hand, Maya pulls his arm towards the floor and his attention to her. Her eyes when he meets them are intensely earnest. “Yeah, that’s right. You don’t need my help analyzing technique, Josh—you told me you understood it when you asked for my help in the first place. You said you needed help to  _ get portraits _ , and that’s what I’m trying to do.” Her hand squeezes his wrist, warm and confident. “Just one more painting. Trust me. I know you’ll get it.”

There is exactly zero point in pretending he won’t do basically whatever she asks, so he follows her with a sigh, letting her keep hold of his hand as she leads them into the next room. “The thing is,” she says, going quickly through the little gallery into a big one that—wow—has the famous painting of Washington crossing the Delaware on one wall, “we’ve been looking at portraits by great artists: Rembrandt, David, Van Gogh, Velasquez, Sargent. Of course those paintings are going to be technically incredible. Of course they’re going to be great no matter what. But portraits aren’t worthwhile only if they’re by great artists.”

“Why are they worthwhile, then?”

She doesn’t answer as they leave the big gallery and enter a little one, this one scattered with statues of Lincoln and lined by paintings of cannon blasts. “We’re going back in time,” he says. “Hang on, there were cameras in the Civil War, which means those people we just saw could have had their pictures taken.”

“Obviously, they couldn’t hang a tiny picture above their mantlepiece to make everybody see they were rolling in it.”

“So portraits are just status symbols.”

The next room is also hung with paintings, none of which he can see well enough to guess the era. Maya clearly knows where she’s going, though, because she makes a beeline for a medium-sized brown-and-red one and tows him along until they’re standing as close as you can get before the security guard tells you to back away. “Not always,” she says, a little mysteriously, turns to the painting and drops his hand.

It’s clearly a sign to start the analysis, so he crosses his arms over his chest and copies her, ready to bs however long it takes to get her to make her point. “Okay, so—”

But  [ this one ](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/11263?searchField=All&;sortBy=relevance&;od=on&;ft=family+paintings&;offset=0&;rpp=20&;pos=2) is different. Rather than a painting of one or two people looking at the artist, there are over a dozen people in this one, none of them apparently aware of the fact that they’re being painted. This isn’t at all what he thinks of when he thinks about portraits. One kid looks like he could be playing an old-school Gameboy, for goodness sake. “Maya, what’s this?”

“This is the point.”

“The point of what?”

“The point of portraits. Look at them, Josh—look at this family. Doesn’t that boy in the back look like he’s in trouble? And his brother in front of him thinks it’s hilarious. The brother in the middle doesn’t understand why the sisters think the baby is so cool, and the little girl holding her mom’s skirts is feeling sad she’s not the baby anymore. That girl just wants to read her book in peace. The grandma is grumpy and the grandpa needs glasses.”

“And that’s important because...”

“Are you seriously not getting this?” She steps back, shaking her head. “You gotta let go of this idea of what makes art meaningful. I know you get set on a way the world works and it takes awhile to see that there’s more sides to the story, but this would be a great time to do it.”

“Do what? I don’t even know how all this fits together.”

“This man— _ that _ man, sitting at the desk—loved art. He hired someone to paint his family, just like we might hire someone to take a family picture. But instead of dressing them up in fancy clothes and sitting them in uncomfortable chairs he asked the artist to put them in a room, like they would be in their everyday life, so he could always remember how they were. It doesn’t matter that no one remembers who this man was or the names of his children. It doesn’t matter that you probably won’t read about Eastman Johnson in an art history textbook or that it doesn’t break new artistic ground. It’s not about that. Why are landscapes important? Or history paintings, or photos of Main Streets in small midwestern towns?”

“Because they show...”

He trails off, expecting her to fill in the blank, but instead she just huffs and shakes her head again. “Sometimes I don’t know how you Matthews live. None of you are willing to leap anywhere without thinking it to death.” Ignoring his protest, she narrows her eyes and fixes him with a near-glare. “I’m going to ask you a question and you’re just going to say the first thing that pops in your head, okay? And then you’re going to act on it.”

It’s a daunting prospect—his mind races from possibility to possibility, and he wants to qualify his answer, but that kind of proves her point, doesn’t it? Desperately hoping his voice isn’t shaking, he says “sure. Okay.”

“Do you want some gelato?”

Of all the questions he thought she might ask, that didn’t even make the list, and he answers the affirmative automatically. “Is gelato going to help me figure it out?” he asks as they wind back through the American wing.

“Oh no. If you haven’t got it yet you’re just going to flunk the class.”

He expects they’ll have to leave the Museum, but apparently the Cafe offers two or three scoops of seasonal flavors at high prices even for New York. He gets two out of concern for his wallet. She gets three and laughs at him, setting her cup to the side and pulling her sketchbook out of her bag when they sit. “You don’t mind, do you? The light and angles are really interesting here.”

“No, go ahead.”

She brushes her hair over one shoulder, selects a yellow colored pencil from a rubber-banded bundle, and appears to forget he’s even there. Slowly eating his gelato, he lets his gaze drift over the other patrons scattered here and there at tiny tables and standing in ebbing lines at the register: a couple holding hands under the table, a group of very fashionable Asian tourists he remembers seeing in one of the galleries, two moms with a stroller and another kid on a leash. All kinds of people with all kinds of lives, taking time on a Saturday to come look at art—and paying, some of them, a decent amount of money to do it. “How much is a museum membership?” he wonders aloud.

Maya doesn’t look up from her drawing. “A hundred bucks.”

“Is it really, or are you guessing?”

“It really is. No, I don’t know that off the top of my head,” she says, answering his question before he asks it, “I’ve looked it up. I hear you get money when you graduate, I’m hoping I have enough after buying a computer to get a membership. I think I’m going to basically live here next year.”

That seems right, he thinks. “Like that book.”

“What book?”

“It has a really long title I can’t remember now. It’s about a brother and a sister who run away from home and come to live in the Met, and they solve a mystery about a Michelangelo statue. They sleep in one of the beds and take baths in the fountain in the restaurant.”

“There isn’t a fountain in the restaurant.”

“There was when the book was written, I guess. It’s pretty old. My teacher read it to me in, like, fourth grade.”

“You shouldn’t tell me these things, Josh,” Maya sighs. “It makes me more angry at all the time I’ve wasted in class.”

“School isn’t a waste of time,” he says as a reflex—long exposure to his brother and Feeny will do that—“but you might like the book, if you have time. But you’ve made yourself at home even without spending the night dodging security guards—you know it like the back of your hand.”

“I told you,” she says, returning to her drawing, “I spend a lot of time here. You get to know things pretty well, if you care enough to pay attention.”

He looks down into his gelato, which has all but melted into a multi-colored puddle, and stirs it thoughtfully. Their entire relationship is basically an essay with that sentence as a thesis, the two of them taking turns to surprise the other with insight no one around them expects. Something about being a little outside what you really want to be part of encourages it, he thinks; maybe if you can figure it out, you can pretend well enough to be let in. Or maybe you’ll just be stuck always observing, never quite getting it. Like with these portraits—all day spent trying to understand them, and no closer than he was before. Because, apparently, he can’t make the leap to understand what makes art meaningful. He thinks about their morning again: Rembrandt’s couple, Lavoisier and his wife, Juan de Pareja. The potato peeler. Sargent’s elites. And then, finally, the one of these things not like the others: the family that Maya thought would make it all click into place for him. The one painting you wouldn’t find in a textbook, the one you would only know about if it meant something to you. The key was in his hand if he could just figure out the lock to put it in.

The first glimmer of an idea creeps over his mental horizon—not enough to see by, but enough to start to light the way. “What’s your favorite painting here?” he asks.

She pauses mid-scribble, then starts again so quickly someone not looking as carefully as he does wouldn’t notice. “What makes you think I have one?”

“Maya.”

“I’m just saying, it’s the  _ Met _ , there are a lot of paintings, it’s pretty hard to pick just one—”

“But you did,” he says, confident. Of course she has a favorite; she acts like she doesn’t care, but the more she pretends nonchalance the surer you can be that it matters a heck of a lot. Which makes his next question even riskier, and even more important: “Will you show me?”

She stares at her paper a minute longer, eyebrows drawn together, and he eats a spoonful of gelato while waits for her to decide if he’s trustworthy—he has zero doubt that’s the question at hand. He’ll understand if he’s not, but he’ll be disappointed. Somehow, everything about this day seems to hang on this question.

“Okay,” she says finally, flipping shut her pad and standing in one graceful motion. “Are you done with your gelato? You can’t take it in the galleries.”

Even if he wasn’t, he’s not about to place ice cream over understanding, and he dumps it in the nearby trash can nearly as quickly as she’s made herself ready to leave. “Let’s do this.”

They head—where else?—back towards the European galleries, this time the ones past the sculptures where they saw Van Gogh. A more modern piece then, he guesses, and tries to imagine what would appeal to her. Her work, which he’s seen on his brother’s fridge and in Riley’s room, tends towards moody colors and abstract shapes; he gets a scary picture of himself making fish faces in front of something neo-Cubist that she says represents her soul. But  [ the painting ](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437434?sortBy=Relevance&;when=A.D.+1800-1900&;what=Paintings&;ao=on&;od=on&;ft=*&;offset=400&;rpp=100&;pos=428) they finally stop in front of is nothing he would have ever expected.

He gazes up at the two girls sitting in the windswept meadow, then over at the one standing next to him. Maya is very carefully avoiding meeting his eye, playing with the strap on her shoulder and reading the placard she probably has memorized. “So, Renoir,” he says, testing the waters.

“Renoir,” she agrees, still not looking at him. “What do you see?”

“Nope.”

That startles her enough that she finally looks at him, eyebrows up in a semblance of amusement. “No? Who’s teaching who, here?”

“This isn’t teaching anymore. You’re showing me your favorite painting, which means  _ you _ have to tell  _ me _ about it.” He grins, lopsided, and elbows her gently. “Please, Miss Hunter, elaborate.”

Neatly side-stepping his elbow, she somehow manages to be closer than she was a second ago, and he gulps a little at the unfamiliar angle and the familiar apple scent. Sometime in the last few years she’s learned how to slice through his carefully-presented cool—not that she couldn’t before, but now he knows she’s perfectly aware of what she’s doing. “Maya,” he says, wobbly.

Now she’s really amused. “You can’t flirt if you’re not willing to back it up, Josh.”

“I wasn’t—”

“Mm, kinda were.”

“Since when is it flirting to ask you about your favorite painting?” His voice squeaks with the strain of denial, which one hundred percent does not prove his point. She laughs, a rolling giggle, but takes pity on him and moves a teeny-tiny step back.

“Depends on the guy, probably. And the attitude.”

“If I was flirting,” he says, “it was entirely accidental.”

“Can’t help yourself?”

“ _ Maya _ .” 

“What?” 

Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth and her eyes are dancing—it’s meant to be distracting, and it nearly works. Unluckily for her, the few inches of distance are enough to gain clarity. He glances back at the painting, then at her, stepping between them and lowering his voice. “If you don’t want to tell me, it’s okay. It’s personal. I get it.”

“Why do you think it’s personal?” she asks, her voice strangled.

“You’re acting weird about it, for one thing. But also”—he looks over his shoulder, and it  makes sense, like a flash—“It’s you and Riley, isn’t it?”

Her eyes go big. “What?”

“You and Riley. I mean, obviously not literally, but—” He turns and looks at it again, retreating, taking in the soft colors, the winding road, the vaguely sketched home in the distance. “Two girls who are friends. There’s a road ahead of them, but they’re almost in a safe little nest together—sometime they’ll have to take that journey, but they’ll do it together, and it’s going to be good.”

Behind them, other patrons burble and the air conditioner moans gustily, but Maya stays quiet long enough that he starts to get worried. Not wanting to pressure her, he starts talking again just to fill the awkward silence: “Not that this can’t be your favorite painting for other reasons, art reasons. I’m sure it’s choking on technique. And not every pair of girls is you and Riley, of course, you aren’t so self-centered that you have to be in the painting to enjoy it—”

“No, that’s why. You got it.”

“What?”

When he meets her eyes, she’s almost gleeful; he wouldn’t be surprised if she jumped up and down and clapped her hands. “You got it! That’s exactly why this is my favorite painting.”

“Nothing to do with technique?”

“Nothing at all.”

“Oh my gosh.” He guessed this would be the key to the whole day, hadn’t he? And  _ click _ , there went the lock. “Portraits aren’t about the techniques, are they?”

“Nope.”

“They’re”—he groans—“they’re about the people in them.”

“What took you so long? You love to look at people and figure out their stories. That’s all portraits are, really.” Watching him thunk his head into his hands a few times, she adds matter-of-factly, “I did tell you at the beginning. At Topanga’s. It’s just like taking a picture of someone you care about, only it lasts for four hundred years. And then people long after you’re dead get to know there was someone who lived and looked like you, and they were people too.”

“Another secret of life,” he says.

“I think so,” she agrees.

They stand there looking at her favorite painting, not speaking, until an old lady edges into their space looking vaguely miffed and they think they’d better let someone else have a turn. “So,” Maya says as they go back into the sculpture hall, “now you can pass art appreciation, and you’ve become a better, more rounded person. And eaten gelato. Not bad for a day’s work.”

“Not bad at all,” he agrees, “but I don’t think we’re done yet.”

“What do you mean?”

“Tell you in a second.”

They pass back through the photographs, then the drawings, and reach the top of the stairs, where he stops her going down them by snagging her hand. She stills as she looks down at the clasp, and he doesn’t think he imagines the breathlessness in her voice. “Josh? What are you doing?”

“There’s a lot of art in this museum,” he says, feeling a little breathless himself, “and I haven’t seen most of it. I think I should have a favorite painting too, right?”

“Everybody should,” she agrees. “Back to European art?”

“Let’s do it.”

But of course, since it’s the Met, after all, there’s too many paintings for him to pick one in one day. So they have to come back the next Saturday. And then the next one. And then the next one, all summer long.

 

THE END


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